Augmented reality mobile game Pokemon Go has sparked many controversies since its launch in 2016. From reckless behaviours like accessing restricted areas just to “catch ‘em all”, to traffic accidents resulting from playing while driving, to crimes like stabbing incidents and robberies, it seems like Pokemon Go is nothing but trouble. This is, however, not the case for Tommy Monkhouse, a student at University of Greenwich in London who lost more than 60kg in a year from playing Pokemon Go.
When Tommy first started playing Pokemon Go, what supposedly should have been a 30-minute walk unknowingly became a three-hour walk as he was so engrossed in playing the game. Tommy recalled his thoughts at that time, “If I can do this in three hours, what’s going to happen over, say, a week, a month, a year?”